“Once a society creates the technology that could put them in touch with the cosmos, they are only a few hundred years away from changing their paradigm from biology to artificial intelligence.” The idea is based on the so-called “time scale argument” or “short window observation.” Many researchers predict we’ll have developed a strong artificial intelligence by 2050 here on Earth — about a hundred years after the invention of computers, or a hundred and fifty years after the invention of radio communication. “The point is that, going from inventing radios to inventing thinking machines is very short — a few centuries at most. The dominant intelligence in the cosmos may well be non-biological.”